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Why Doesn’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis by Building Some New Cities? (currentaffairs.org)
8 points by rndmize on July 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



I got a good chuckle out of this one. Especially amusing are the uses of just... as if one can merely wave a magic wand and--poof--cities appear!

> just needs some more cities

> When China needs new places for people to live, they just build a new city.

No. China builds new cities not for people to live in but due to crazy economic decision-making.

Also, let's ignore broken supply chains and unavailability of all kinds of parts required and materials to construct livable housing, and also ignore the western US' unfolding water disaster.


California already has several cities available for housing the homeless:

1) Eagle Mountain. Housing, Administration and ancillary buildings are already erected. 2) Salton Sea 3) Manzanar

In addition, there are several abandoned military bases that could be put back into habitable shape with minimal effort.


There are many places in California where it's easy to build housing.

However, those places are not close to where the "more" or "less expensive" housing demand is.

To be a bit more precises, those places are at least an hour from the demand.

Building in those places won't solve that problem.

In addition to not understanding the constraints, the rant about "other countries can do big projects" suggest that the author thinks that the benefits of a solution are somehow an argument for its feasibility.

It doesn't matter whether other countries can do something. The relevant question (for US/CA projects) is whether the US/CA can.

It's fun to propose things, however, the actual value comes from doing, and the author is completely uninterested in fixing why the US/CA can't do big projects. (Hint: the Republicans/conservatives didn't screw up the Big Dig or CA's high speed rail project.)


good one. we can’t even build a new railroad in this state.


There are so many claims on land (and water) that it would be quite difficult and expensive to pull off.


Water?


Water, high taxation, red tape, and an inefficient, generationally corrupt state government.


Last one is different from which state? New York? New Jersey? Pennsylvania? Illinois? Mississippi? Florida?




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